Jun 10, 2019 | Ackworth School
Tuesday and Wednesday – June 25th & 26th – To be performed in Great Garden – Ackworth School – 6.30pm Start
Seventeen-year-old Elsie Wright has never done well at school and though her drawings are extraordinary, a career as an artist isn’t something a girl from a run-of-the-mill village like Cottingley could normally aspire to. Besides, it’s 1917, there’s a war on and the constant news of deaths from the front are affecting every family in her village (including her own), meaning Elsie’s own artistic endeavours aren’t at the top of anyone’s list of priorities to encourage.
When Elsie borrows her father’s camera and fakes photographs of her and her younger cousin Frances talking with fairies at the bottom of the Wright’s garden, the girls don’t expect the public fervour their work will unleash. While Elsie’s father dismisses the pictures as nonsense, her mother passes them on to a local spiritualist, the theosophist Madame Blavatsky, who – enjoying an increased profile amid the fascination in spiritualism ignited by the war – announces them as concrete proof that fairies exist. Suddenly, Elsie and Frances are catapulted to the heights of fame, their photographs published around the world, even capturing the attention of celebrated author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
A young newspaper reporter called Winifred Douglas is tasked by her editor to expose the now-famous Elsie as a fraud. Desperate to prove herself, Winifred infiltrates Elsie’s group of friends in Cottingley in an effort to uncover how the photographs were faked. But it is when she begins to investigate why Elsie steadfastly maintains the photographs’ veracity that Winifred begins to think there is something more to the girl’s actions than simple attention-grabbing. The play jumps back and forward in time between a charged encounter between Winifred and Elsie at a high-profile London event staged by Conan Doyle to promote Elsie’s photographs, and scenes earlier in the year leading up to Elsie’s taking of the photographs, and the burgeoning of her ensuing fame.
Apr 5, 2019 | Ackworth School
There were some beautiful Easter Bonnets on display today at our Coram House assembly!
Apr 5, 2019 | Ackworth School
Henry and Frazer have cycled the equivalent distance of Costa Rica from coast to coast!!
Costa Rica was chosen because this is the destination for the Projects Abroad trip in the coming summer.
Well done to you both!
Mar 21, 2019 | Ackworth School
Andrey competed in the Big Bang Fair 2019 which took place earlier this month at the NEC, Birmingham.
The programme aims to select and fund a candidate, The Young Scientific Instrument Maker 2019 to participate in the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in the USA in May this year.
Andrey was selected by the SIM judges, for a project entitled ‘A novel method for skeletal age estimation based on cranial suture analysis‘ at the Big Bang Science Fair 2019.
Andrey’s method for assessing how well the cranial suture had healed (the determinant of age) was to use an instrument that took the subjectivity out of the assessment of gap width in the suture from cross sectional scans of the skull. The instrument accurately measured the mix of light and dark pixels in an image of the scan, and employed a mathematical algorithm to put an accurate measure on the degree of healing. Tests had shown the repeatability and accuracy of the method.
Andrey will now be given a short period of technical and commercial mentoring before attending ISEF in the USA in May.
Feb 4, 2019 | Ackworth School
Ackworth School is proud to announce that it is now a member of the All-Steinway Group of Schools.
The School has taken delivery of 10 new Steinway pianos recently, making it only the 15th school in the UK to be admitted to this prestigious group.
To celebrate this occasion, there was an original ten-piano composition featuring current and past students, written by the School’s Director of Music, Daniel Marks, himself an accomplished pianist. This performance took place in the Ackworth School Meeting House.
The innovation has been made possible by the support of Old Scholars of the School and will ensure the very highest level of music tuition is available to its students.
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Director of Music at Ackworth, Dan Marks said:
“I am delighted at the acquisition of these wonderful Steinway pianos and I know they will be greatly appreciated by our students. These facilities will be enjoyed by members of the community including Ackworth Concert Society and Pontefract Music Festival for many years to come and will have a large positive impact on a whole generation of young musicians.”
Headmaster, Anton Maree added: “We sincerely thank our Old Scholars whose generosity enables Ackworth School to become a leading school for music in the north of England.”
